


a stranger to yourself

by dinodo



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, NO ONE KNOWS, Suicidal Thoughts, is jacobi an alien?, probably won't fit with canon by tommorow ohwell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 03:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11175825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinodo/pseuds/dinodo
Summary: Post-Bolero. Jacobi deals with the implications of Lovelace's resurrection.





	a stranger to yourself

Shortly after they brought Jacobi back to the observation deck, the thing wearing Lovelace’s face walked in.

In the panicked aftermath of her resurrection, Minowski had moved Jacobi and Kepler to separate rooms aboard the Hephaestus, while Eiffel finished the burial-at-sea for the two bodies that remained—fortunately or unfortunately—dead. Kepler had smirked and whispered his silver-tongued words into Minkowski’s ear as she ignored him, face stoic but eyes wild, as though her mind was working a million miles a minute. Deep down, Jacobi felt the anger, the hatred he felt for Minkowski that he had held so closely in the hours after he heard that gunshot echoing over the com, but it was buried under layers and layers of weariness. He stayed silent, sat silent in his tiny room, his tiny cell, and felt hollow. The world had been ripped out from under him twice that day, and he was too aching and tired to confront the implications of any of it.

They moved him back, eventually. For safety reasons, they told him. The wing of the ship they had put him in had been damaged in whatever crazy alien encounter they’d had this time while Jacobi was locked up, and had decided the observation deck was less likely to spontaneously combust. Jacobi didn’t care. The result was the same.

Kepler wasn’t in the observation deck. He’d probably talked his way out of it somehow, convinced Minkowski she needed him with her, shown her his value in sorting out their remaining predicaments. Jacobi felt a tiny sliver of victory in that, which was immediately crushed by memories of this room. Kepler might be out, but Jacobi was not. And this was the last place he wanted to be. The place where they’d lain Maxwell’s cold body out, the place where a body had returned to life. Not hers.

Jacobi still wasn’t sure if he’d have been more or less shattered if it had been.

The door slid open, and a shadowed figure drifted in, cutting tight across the wall opposite to him. The pistol at her hip and the hands wound tightly together gave away her paranoia, even after all shootable danger was supposedly passed. Not-Lovelace. He snorted. Of course it would be her.

“Here to step up the torture, _C_ _aptain_? Unfortunately I don’t know how that’s gonna work—you guys have played pretty much every card you have on me. And I have nothing left to say to you.”

Not-Lovelace turned, surprised, as if she hadn’t known he was there. “…Jacobi. I was just…”

“You were just… _what_. Coming to see you could ruin my life _more_? Well, your living existence has already managed to decrease what I’d call rock bottom by a couple hundred feet. Congratulations! You didn’t even need to be in this room to achieve that one.”

Not-Lovelace’s face twisted, and for a minute Jacobi thought it looked as though it actually pained her, the implications of what she was. It was gone in a flash, replaced by a stonier expression that sat more naturally on the face she wore.

“And what, exactly, do you think that I would get out of that.  I’m just trying to stay out of people’s way. Didn’t know you’d be here—or that you could be so far into your own head and still in this room. Impressive. I’ll leave.”

She turned away.

“What _are_ you?”

The words slipped out of him involuntarily. Not-Lovelace turned on her heel, slowly, the shadows on her face writhing, making her look strange and unnatural. A glimpse of what she was underneath.

“What am I?” She moved towards him, voice quiet, measured, but with something underneath, something Jacobi had come to know well in the last few days. A thin undercurrent of panic that matched the one he felt strung along his own mind, dammed up but pushing out on all edges, inches away from bursting from its restraints.

“Yes,” Jacobi breathed, tense, angry. “What. Are. You. And why are you here?”

Not-Lovelace let out a choked, bitter laugh. “What am I. You know, that’s a good one. But I’ve got one that’s better. You wanna talk Jacobi? Let’s talk. Let’s talk about what you _think_ I am.  Am I a monster to you, for wanting you all dead? I doubt it. That’s right up your alley. But just in case you’ve forgotten, Kepler has been threatening our lives since he got to this god- forsaken ship! Do you hate us? Because we killed your _friend_? Well guess. What. Command got _all_ my friends killed. And Kepler killed _me_. So you can—”

“Bullshit.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“Bull. Shit. _You_ haven’t died at all. You’re nigh-invincible. Lovelace’s old crew? They died. Hilbert? Yeah, he died. _Maxwell_? Renee Minkowski put a bullet through her skull and she _died_. _Captain Isabel Lovelace_ died, sure. But _you_?” Jacobi laughed, sucked in a breath. “Oh no. You never died. Whatever you are, you never _ever_ died. Whatever you are, whatever…Whatever…”

“…Whatever _we_ are. So that's what this is.” Not-Lovelace’s smile was empty. She slid down the wall opposite him so that they were face to face. “Alright Mr. Jacobi. What is it that you really want to talk about. Because I have… hmmmm, apparently all eternity to talk about it if this body works the way it seems to.”

Jacobi opened his mouth, closed it again, took a deep breath. Felt the tension spreading through his body.

“You’re not Lovelace. You don’t have her mind. You… You can't possibly. You’re someone else. Who sent you here? What is your job? Why are you _here_?”

“I don’t know.” It was an open, plain admission, the truth laid bare. Jacobi shuddered. He pulled himself together. It had to be a lie. It had to be—

“I’m not lying. I don’t know if it will _matter_ —” She sighed here, as though tired of it, of doing and saying and _wishing_ things that were all for nothing. “—but I don’t remember anything other than being her. Her life, my life, whatever. I don’t know anything else. I don’t know how to _be_ anyone else. That’s probably the last thing you want to hear.”

It was. Jacobi—or Not-Jacobi, hell if he knew, if _anyone_  knew—couldn’t hold himself together any longer.

“You’re _lying_! You’re an alien from... I don't know, the void of space, or a planet, or the damn star out there or _something_ , and you're here with a _purpose_. You have to be you _HAVE_ to be lying! You have to _know_ something! You—” his voice broke, and he slumped against the wall “You know something else. Please.”

Not-Lovelace’s arms were wrapped around herself, her head bowed. She looked smaller than Jacobi had ever seen her, like she actually felt sorry for him. If he wasn’t falling apart he might have found that funny.

She looked him in the eyes. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

The man who knew himself only as Jacobi drew in a shaky breath. “Give me your gun.”

“ _What?_ ”

He gritted his teeth “ _Give_ me your _gun_. I can’t live like this. I can’t—I have to know—”

“Oh, and _shooting_ yourself is going to help with that.”

“Do you have any better ideas?!”

“Jacobi calm down—”

“GIVE ME YOUR GODDAMN GUN!”

The room seemed to still around them. Not-Lovelace stood stiff, eyes fierce, hands clenched at her sides. Jacobi sucked in breath after heavy breath, tears he didn’t know he had left falling unbidden down his face.

“I—I have to. I have to know. If I’m wrong—”

“If you’re wrong, you’re dead. And if you’re right, you’ll want to be. You can’t do this. So maybe you _aren’t_ human! So what! You can’t just throw your life away like this. You’re still you. You’re still a _person_. That—” She swallowed hard “That’s enough. That has to be enough.”

Jacobi breathed out. All the muscles in his body seemed to give out at once, and he hung there, limp, unmoving. Sobbing. He fell back against the wall.

“I wish—Alana—”

Lovelace was there then, beside him. “I know.”

They sat like that for a while, in silence. The changeling and Schrodinger’s alien. Jacobi wanted to laugh at how stupid it was, that he would end up here, with _Lovelace_ of all people being the one who understood where he was coming from. The piece of his heart that Maxwell used to fill still ached, and he wasn’t sure what he was, if he was even human anymore, but he was still here. He was still Daniel Jacobi, he had to be. He didn’t know how to be anyone else. He would find something to hold on to, eventually, to make himself feel real again. Or someone else to shoot, he supposed. Whichever opportunity presented itself first.

Lovelace stayed there, next to him, until Jacobi calmed down, his breathing evening out. Then she moved towards the door of the observation deck. Jacobi recognized somewhere in the fog of his mind, that Lovelace, too, had something to wrestle with. She had her own, worse, battle to fight. Jacobi guessed that she had come up here to find somewhere quiet and alone to work through things, and had found him instead.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Lovelace didn’t turn around, but Jacobi could see her back straighten, could see the strength in those shoulders which had held and would continue to hold up the world.

She would be alright, eventually.

They would be alright.


End file.
